Thursday, August 27, 2015

Isn't it time for Brian (Fredo) Cashman to grow the bleep up?

Last October, after the Yankees announced that Brian (Fredo) Cashman would be coming back as general manager, I made a conscious choice that I had to pull back on my "Cashman must go" narrative in Subway Squawkers. Not only was my anti-Cashman rhetoric futile, but all of the negativity was getting me down. Since then, I have made a conscious choice to have more positive things in this blog, and have expanded what I write about to include things like running and music and TV.

That being said, I feel like I have to say something about S.L. Price's recent Sports Illustrated profile on Brian Cashman. Let's start with the title: "Brian Cashman: The Yankees' GM is an iconic and fearless figure." Iconic? Puh-lease. Derek Jeter is iconic. Mickey Mantle was iconic. Joe DiMaggio was iconic. Brian Cashman is a middle-aged schlub with a perpetual midlife crisis.

He famously told Alex Rodriguez to "shut the f*** up." Maybe it's time for Cashman to grow the f*** up?"

Here are some of the most notable tidbits in the story.

Cashman apologized in the piece for telling Alex Rodriguez in 2013 to shut the bleep up:

"I blew my top," Cashman says one Saturday last month in his office at Yankee Stadium. “I got calls from managers, general managers, agents, players. They were all, ‘I’ve been wanting to say that, good for you.’ But I was embarrassed. I conduct myself, for the most part, at a much higher standard than that."

Notice how he made sure to point out how many phone calls he got supporting him at the same time he is supposedly apologizing!

In recounting this event, Cashman also calls himself a "prankster" as he throws a paper snapper at the wall. He then tells the reporter, "I got a fart machine out in the hallway." Good grief.

The article also talks about how he sets off a fart machine on his keychain to prank unsuspecting fans. He also hands shock pens to scouts and once made a fake transaction in 2006 to prank Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine, where he claimed that the Mets had drafted Dellin Betances.

You know what I always say? Leave the comedy to the trained professionals? Would be nice if Cashman could heed that advice. Because he is about as funny as a root canal.

The article also talks about Cashman's perpetual midlife crisis:

Every so often, on his lunch hour, Cashman will pedal his five-gear bike along the West Side Highway, six miles down past 42nd Street and back north again. He nearly got crushed once: Somebody ran a stop sign near Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. He doesn’t wear a helmet. “Adrenaline junkie,” Cashman says, and taken with the skydiving and high-rise scaling and the rogue f-bomb and everything else, it’s easy to assume a cliché. “I tease him: ‘You’re too young for a midlife crisis,’ ” says Yankees president Randy Levine.
“I call it living,” Cashman says.

First of all, Cashman is my age -- 48. We are both in midlife!

Second, you are not an "adrenaline junkie" if you ride a bike without a helmet, especially in Manhattan. You are a moron. And it is not "living" to be so reckless; it is just reckless.

In 1985, a guy I went to high school with got hit by a car when he was on his bicycle (this was back in the days before bicycle helmets.) He was a bright young man until his head injury, he nearly died, and he was never the same. It was a true tragedy

So to hear a grown-ass man like Cashman, let alone somebody in the position of authority that he is in, blithely ignore the risks of riding a bicycle without a helmet makes me sick. Grow up already!

* * *

On another note, I did have to agree with Cashman's response to Derek Jeter here:

Cashman calls Jeter “the greatest player I will have ever had,” but often admitted impatience with Jeter’s divalike tendencies. He likes being one of the few to tell the Captain no. During one of their last face-to-face meetings, in 2010, Jeter asked Cashman, “Who would you rather have playing shortstop this year than me?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?” Cashman said. Told to go ahead, Cashman instantly named the Rockies’ Troy Tulowitzki and was ready to list a few more. Wiser heads stepped in, but not before Cashman could say, “We’re not paying extra money for popularity. We’re paying for performance.”

I actually supported Cashman's stance that time. That being said, the Yankees did pay extra for Jeter in his last year, and kept him at shortstop and at No. 2 in the lineup when his performance didn't merit it. Why didn't the reporter ask Cashman why that happened, and why they paid for popularity!

Price also writes about how Cashman has never won Executive of the Year:

"Despite winning an average 96 games a year and missing the playoffs just three times, Cashman has never won that award and most likely never will."

Oh, please. Why should he? One ring in 15 years, folks, with the highest payroll in baseball most of those years.

Cashman didn't do much at the trading deadline, of course, but A-Rod gets the blame for that, according to this article:

In mid-July, Cashman stopped A-Rod in the stadium parking lot. “We need anything?” Cashman asked. Not much, was the reply. If his slugger’s mouthings have irked Cashman in the past, no one questions Rodriguez’s baseball smarts. “I asked only because I know that he might have something to give. If it’s a good idea, I don’t care where it comes from,” Cashman says. He shrugs."

Price continues (emphasis added):

Hal Steinbrenner considers any season out of the playoffs “embarrassing,” and if the Yankees lose the division, Cashman’s inaction at the deadline will not be forgotten. But whatever happens from here on out, it can’t really alter Cashman’s reputation. “I don’t have to prove myself anywhere,” he says.

To which I say, that's precisely the problem with keeping Cashman on! Oy.

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Lisa is a Yankee fan from Staten Island. Jon is a Met fan from Manhattan. These best friends have been squabbling about their teams -- and each other -- since 2006. Now they are writing about New York City life beyond baseball.